


they call kids like us vicious

by suzukiblu



Series: Avamorphs [4]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Past Child Abuse, Sibling Incest, Violence, but for obvious reasons I'm tagging for it anyway, kind of not really incest, look AUs are complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22017289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: There are monsters in the school.Specifically, there are huge horrible worms fromHellin the school.
Relationships: Azula/Zuko (Avatar), Ty Lee/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Avamorphs [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1581343
Comments: 23
Kudos: 277





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lee and Ty Lee-centric prequel side stories.

Lee’s girlfriend is a really cool girl. She’s bold, she’s smart, she’s easy to please, and she always dresses up and does her hair nice for their dates, and she’s interested in him and the things he does and the things he likes. 

And then one day she’s _too_ interested, and they have a fight. 

And he—and he—

“I didn’t mean to,” Lee says, stumbling back a step. Jin stares at him, her eyes shocked and betrayed, her hand covering her reddened cheek. Her lip is bleeding. Or her tongue, maybe—she might’ve accidentally bitten it. 

He didn’t mean to. 

“Lee—?” she starts in a small voice, and he bolts, and he doesn’t talk to her again. She doesn’t try to talk to him either, and at school they manage not to see each other and everywhere else . . . well, he stops going everywhere else except kung fu and just out in the dark where no one can see him. Where he doesn’t have to see anyone else.

He’s . . . he’s scared of girls, after that. He remembers it, remembers what he _did_ and—and—and you’re not supposed to do things like that. You’re bad, if you do things like that. You’re a bad _person_. 

You scare people who don’t deserve it. 

Lee doesn’t want to scare people who don’t deserve it. Lee never, ever wants to scare _anyone_ who doesn’t deserve it. 

Then his dad gets transferred, and he has to go to a junior high on the opposite end of the city and he . . . and he can forget, kind of. Except he never can.

Then three days into the new school, all of which he spends trying to disappear, he gets bowled over in the hallway by a flock of shrieking identical girls. 

“What the _hell_ ,” he sputters, staring up at four matching faces all grinning down at him coyly. 

“Soooorry, cutie!” they trill, laughing, and split off four ways down the hall. Lee stares after them in bemusement, wondering if he hit his head and didn’t notice. 

“Are you okay?” a voice asks sheepishly, and pretty, _strong_ hands grab his shoulder and pull him up. 

It’s a fifth girl, and the same face. 

Lee stares, and wonders why it looks _different_ on her. 

And then he bolts again. 

Two days later he gets into a fight just off school property, and he sees her again. 

“ _Stop_ it!” she shouts, pulling him back from the guy whose face he’s just beaten bloody, was trying to beat bloodier. No one’s . . . no one’s actually done that before. 

The next day he gets in another fight when he knows she’s around, and she does it again. And the day after that, she does it again. 

And the day after _that_ , she punches him in the face so hard that she breaks his nose, and blocks the instinctive return strike. 

“Knock it _off_!” she yells as he bleeds all down his shirt and stares at her in shock, his wrist held in her grip. “God, you’re so _weird_!” 

Her name is Ty Lee. 

They get suspended for three days. He’s not entirely sure how, but they end up spending them together. 

He’s even _less_ sure how they end up dating at the end of them, but he goes to her place to meet her on the third day and one of her sisters teases him by pretending to be her, and he frowns at her until she goes away, and then _another_ one of them teases him the same way and he really doesn’t get why they think it’s funny. It’s not funny, it’s _weird_. 

Then she tries to cozy up against him, which is way, way weirder. She’s curvy and pretty like Ty Lee, yeah, but she’s _soft_ , too, and he doesn’t like it and frowns at her until she goes away, too. 

Ty Lee comes downstairs _furious_ , and Lee hears her in the back of the house shrieking at her sisters and practically in tears and _why do you always DO this, he’s just my FRIEND!_ and them shrieking back at her _oh my GOD as IF we’re even interested!_ , and Lee leans into the kitchen and they’re all three wearing the same sweater and all three angry and all three screaming so loud he can’t tell which one’s saying what. 

He really doesn’t care, though. 

“What took you so long?” he asks Ty Lee accusingly, and she stares at him in a strange way that he doesn’t understand the meaning of. 

So they end up dating. And he knows what made him like her, but he never really figures out what made her like him.


	2. Chapter 2

There are monsters in the school. 

Specifically, there are huge horrible worms from _Hell_ in the school. Ty Lee screams in horror, and then kicks the thing in the underbelly with enough force to make its disgusting yellow skin split like an overstuffed garbage bag. The worm screeches and _lunges_ and Ty Lee dives one way and Lee dives the other and sticks his butterfly knife in its side and lets it slit itself open and then they’re both running past it and _then_ there’s another one rearing up in their _faces_ , fat and stinking and all wet, slavering mouth and disgusting eyes and oh shit its _teeth_ —

“Ohhh . . . _fiddlesticks_ ,” Ty Lee says, and Lee grits his own teeth and it turns out his girlfriend’s twice as crazy as he ever thought she was and he’s exactly as suicidal as that, because they both plow _through_ the thing at once like a pair of linebackers and not a pair of skinny teenagers. They’re watching too many action movies, he decides. 

News flash, though: crazy works, even if only because of panic-fueled adrenaline. They get past the second worm and they keep running and the things are chasing them _screaming_. Lee has never been hunted in the traditional sense, but he knows the feeling of being prey, of being meat for the slaughter and this—this is it. 

“Fiddlesticks,” Ty Lee says again as they skid around the corner and thrown themselves down the stairs, “fiddlesticks fiddlesticks _fiddlesticks_ —” She vaults over the railing neat and pretty, and Lee throws himself after her not neat _or_ pretty but effective enough to get him down half a flight faster without breaking anything. He’s suddenly never been more grateful for anything he’s _ever_ practiced than he is kung fu. 

He’s wishing he’d practiced a little harder, though. 

He’s wishing a _lot_ harder when they get to the second-floor landing and come face-to-face with the bastard child of a dinosaur and a Ginsu knife. 

And unlike the worms, this monster? Not slow. 

Not slow at _all_. 

And not something Lee wants to pit his little pigsticker against. _Definitely_ not something he wants to let Ty Lee kick. So he kicks out the hallway window instead and they jump the story to the ground and land in the bushes and broken glass and that hurts a _lot_ worse than the movies make it look like, but not too bad to keep them from running. Vice Principal Choi is in the parking lot, opening his car door like the _perfect_ chance to escape, and looks up in surprised alarm at the sound of their running feet. 

“What on _Earth_ are you two—” he starts, and something feels strange and Lee hesitates. 

Ty Lee doesn’t. She _charges_ and hits the vice principal three times in rapid succession, knocking him back into the side of the car. Lee took kung fu; Ty Lee did Ba Gua. 

“Are you _nuts_?!” he yells at her, and Ty Lee just grabs his arm and _yanks_ at him and then running is the only natural response. 

“Can’t you _tell_?!” she shouts back at him. “He’s the same thing as the monsters!” 

Speaking of the monsters, that’s when they run into them again. And this time, it’s not just one dinosaur ginsu knife. 

“Fiddlesticks,” Ty Lee says, her face white with terror. 

Vice Principal Choi just looks very, very _interested_. 

“Bring them to my office,” he says. “We’re going to have a little talk.” 

Lee thinks about being afraid, but it’s just easier to keep fighting. Then Vice Principal Choi’s dinosaur-knives drag them to the office like hall monitors and sit them down by force and Vice Principal Choi smiles a kind, attentive smile at Lee and Ty Lee from the other side of his desk and tells them that they have talents his people have a use for. 

It’s funny, but even with nightmare monsters standing just outside the door and the world turned on its ass and life somehow even _less_ understandable than it was twenty minutes ago, Lee’s first thought is that no one’s ever told him he was talented before, much less _useful_. 

Ty Lee still looks terrified, but the more Vice Principal Choi talks the more trouble Lee has understanding why.


	3. Chapter 3

The first time Ty Lee is around Zuko Five Three Three without Azula Eight Nine Five in her head and tearing her up with waking nightmares to—to break her _in_ , she can’t quite make sense of him. 

She thought Lee was suffering too. She was _terrified_ for Lee, because his nightmares are so much worse than hers. But when Azula Eight Nine Five slides out of her head again and her legs give out and Lee’s arms catch her, they’re not really “Lee’s” arms. 

Ty Lee stares up dazedly into soft, concerned eyes and thinks, _you look like a real boy_. And then she cries. Zuko Five Three Three frowns and touches her tears testingly, obviously not understanding what they are but still looking so . . . looking so _not_ like Lee ever knew how to look, and Ty Lee cries harder. 

He’s not like the other Yeerks. She knows this from the beginning. Most of the others, their auras overwhelm and crush and _subjugate_ , their auras crush their hosts in constant punishment and wear them down further and further over time, but Zuko’s . . . it just doesn’t. Lee’s aura alone is a dark, ichor-thick shell hiding a soft, thready heartbeat of firefly glow, but Zuko Five Three Three burns like a _star_ inside him. Around him. 

_Throughout_ him. 

It’s as if one day Lee is bare firefly-glimpses hidden away and the next day there is light _pouring_ out of him and then the day after _that_ . . . 

And then the day after that . . . the day after that, Ty Lee can’t tell what’s Lee and what’s Zuko Five Three Three. Not at first glance, anyway. 

She tries to find the words for it, but it’s impossible to crush a realization like that down into words. It’s like a strobe light skeleton, flesh and bone flickering back and forth fastfast _fast_ between Lee’s golden glow and Zuko Five Three Three’s red fire—one instant one is the flesh and the other is the bone and the next it’s the other way around and she doesn’t even understand what she’s _seeing_ , really, only that it doesn’t happen to other Controllers. Only that the ichor-shell Lee used to have is gone. 

And that it’s the one thought in her head that Azula Eight Nine Five doesn’t care about, because what could a _human_ ever know about Yeerks?


	4. Chapter 4

Zuko squirms out of his ear and into the pool and Lee comes up wincing, raking sludgy hair out of his face and feeling _empty_. Beside him, Ty Lee jerks upright and bursts into tears, covering her face with her hands. Lee grabs her around the waist and pulls her up and takes her down the pier, and she clings to him and weeps messily into his shoulder. 

“She _killed_ them, she _killed_ them—” Ty Lee sobs, and Lee tries not to sigh. People kill people. _He’s_ killed people—Zuko’s a fast draw, but he isn’t always fast to pull the trigger. Killing people is kind of what happens when you get drafted. 

He doesn’t understand what the big deal is. 

Ty Lee sobs harder and Lee pulls her over to the voluntary hosts’ waiting area and down onto the nearest couch. She curls up in his lap and cries into his shirt, and the other human hosts scowl and ignore them. More than once Lee’s been told to take Ty Lee to the cages because she’s pissing them off. More than once Lee has disagreed with this sentiment, and made said disagreement violently obvious. Nothing permanent, nothing that leaves bruises or even much in the way of an ache, but as far as most of the other human hosts go, well, ten seconds of _really sharp pain_ is enough to get them to back off.

And really, like he doesn’t know how not to leave bruises?

The Hork-Bajir, fortunately, don’t usually care. But they’re nicer than humans, as a general rule, and besides that Ty Lee’s crying doesn’t rasp the wrong way across their senses—she could be chattering away happily like nothing was wrong at all and they’d barely notice the difference. And the Taxxons, they just _like_ it. 

“I can’t _do_ this,” Ty Lee moans, and Lee wraps himself around her and presses his mouth against the nape of her neck. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I’m going _crazy_ , I can’t _do_ this!” 

“You always say that,” Lee sighs, and Ty Lee chokes on another sob. He scowls at her in frustration, not _understanding_ —it’s been months, why isn’t she _over_ it, why does she keep getting _worse_?—and thinks not for the first time that it would’ve been better if Azula Eight Nine Five was in him and Zuko Five Three Three was in Ty Lee. 

Except Ty Lee wouldn’t pull the trigger when Zuko hesitated, and those two idiots would both get killed over it. 

“She _killed_ them, Lee, she—oh God, it was _awful_ ,” Ty Lee says brokenly, shaking her head in denial. “Their lights went out. Their lights were so pretty and she put them _out_ , they—they—”

Lee sighs again, and belatedly thinks to press his mouth against the corner of her jaw and pet down her back. That’ll help, right? Touching and things like that. Ty Lee likes touching. 

Except he’s never been very good at touching. He tries to think, tries to remember, and Ty Lee stifles her sobs and he rubs their foreheads together lightly, stroking the backs of her wrists. She smiles tremulously, sad and haunted, and fresh tears spill down her face. 

“Like this,” she reminds him hoarsely, pressing in close and guiding his hands to her sides the same way she has to every three days. Lee blinks, wondering why he _always_ forgets, and Ty Lee surges into him, suddenly desperate, and knocks him back against the arm of the sofa and kisses him, and Lee kisses back and tries to remember how to touch her right. 

He’s really no good at it. He could sort of fake it before, but at some point he forgot how. 

“God, Lee, Zuko Five Three _Three_ could do it better,” Ty Lee mutters roughly when his hands hesitate a second too long, digging her nails into the back of his neck. 

“Yeah, he does,” Lee agrees, relieved that she understands, and Ty Lee . . . Ty Lee stares at him, for some reason, and then cries a little again and drops her forehead back against his and intertwines their fingers. 

She’s so hard to understand these days. 

Lee hates the Yeerk pool, not in the least because he always ends up with his arms full of either a weeping Ty Lee or a raging one. There’s always screaming and crying and grief and fury and too much stuff going on for him to care about and no one ever just shuts _up_. And the hosts in the cages are always all wailing and bitching like what, they think it’ll accomplish something? If they’re _that_ attached to running their own bodies you’d think they’d do something more interesting with the time they spend doing it. 

Mostly, though, he hates it here because this is the place where Zuko leaves him.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/)


End file.
